In advance of her upcoming course Cold Pastoral: Literature, Nature, and the Anthropocene, Rebecca Ariel Porte sat down with fellow BISR faculty member Suzanne Schneider to record a faculty chat on pastoral literature, longing, our relation to nature, and the meaning of the pastoral in an age of climate change. How have humans, over time, accounted for nature and our place within it? Is nature truly something apart from humanity, and can humans relate to it non-exploitatively? Why has nature been perceived differently at different historical moments? What did Keats mean by “Cold Pastoral”?

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